Posted on 01/03/2009 10:32:49 AM PST by An Old Man
One the more remarkable aspects of the modern conservative movement is its eagerness to believe whatever it prefers to believe, whatever gives conservatives ammunition against their opponents, regardless of the facts and data and expert opinion.
The latest example of such behavior is the claim that FDR’s New Deal extended and deepened the Great Depression, a newly formed myth that is without any basis in fact. Yet it is embraced by some on the right solely because it bolsters their argument against policies proposed by President-elect Barack Obama.
(Excerpt) Read more at ajc.com ...
Hoover started the most massive spending increase to get America going, but conditions continued to deteriorate as big government interventions clouded investment opportunities.
FDR tried to almost dictatorially turn the Surpremes into his rubber stamp for his un constitutional economic polices. Further on his left were a series of even more crackpot politicians and of course those communists who were outright and not working from with in his administration.
The results of all this was that investment capital sat on the sidelines for over a decade.
The Depression didn't end with the beginning of the war. 11 able body males were pulled out of a population of around 150 million, so about one in five working age males were taken out of the labor force. Before the war unemployment was running around 20%.
In some ways you can say the government interventions caused the Depression, as much as they caused the war. Attributing the solution to the causing agent is kind of not kosher, in as much as 60 million were killed( another labor reducing activity) and the loss of a major part of European and Japanese productivity.
I know I am being a little expansive but I'm not one to let the lefties define the terms. Matter of fact if a Lefty says so and so, I know it isn't that, it must be something else.
What kind of people would actually read this crap from Newsweak and the AJC and honestly think they are reporting accurately or unbiasedly? They know conservatives (Limbaugh) are right, and they have to lie about it as usual in their reporting.
You forgot the barf alert.
Sheesh, every sober economist I know of has declared or admitted grudgingly that it was ramping up war production for WW II that ended the Great Depression, and only by denying the argument from analogy that other instances of economies lagging under dirigist policies can one deny a factual basis for the position that the New Deal made the Great Depression deeper and longer than it would otherwise have been.
Of course if one denies argument by analogy with other similar historical events, one denies the possibility of establishing causal relationships among historical events, which are necessarily unique.
Believe me, it’s no fantasy.
One the more remarkable aspects of the modern conservative movement is its eagerness to believe whatever it prefers to believe, whatever gives conservatives ammunition against their opponents, regardless of the facts and data and expert opinion.
A little Projection there Frances.
The latest example of such behavior is the claim that FDR’s New Deal extended and deepened the Great Depression, a newly formed myth that is without any basis in fact.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx
FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate
By Meg Sullivan| 8/10/2004 12:23:12 PM
Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
After scrutinizing Roosevelt’s record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.
“Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump,” said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA’s Department of Economics. “We found that a relapse isn’t likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies.”
http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v25n4/powell.pdf
How FDR Prolonged the Great Depression by Jim Powell
Yes, and conservatives are very mean about poor old Uncle Joe Stalin, too.
FDR brazenly stepped outside the bounds of the Constitution .. this is indisputable, and all else pales in comparison.
If FDR did not prolong the depression, then why did the GDP of the UK (under largely Conservative governments) only drop about 5-6% vs almost 30% for the US under the Democrats?
FDR was elected in 1932 because the Republicans, being the party in power, were blamed for the depression.
He was re-elected in 1936 because he was a master communicator and boosted morale, despite the hard numbers about the economy.
He would have lost in 1940 if not for the wars in Europe and China as he was seen as a steady hand.
He only won in 1944 because the country was not in the mood to change horses in mid-stream.
He was a master politician facing a defeated and demoralized opposition that had run out of ideas.
There is a lesson for us as Obama takes office. Republicans and conservatives need to hold Obama to account when his policies fail and need to be ready with alternatives, otherwise he will win reelection on the strength of his image regardless of the damage he does.
Krugman doesn't know what he's talking about. Is he suggesting that Zimbabwe and Cuba are doing bad because they're not spending enough?
“...FDR made investment unclear. An investor could not tell when the rules were going to change. FDR was picking winners and losers.”
As I remember, one thing FDR did was raise business taxes to pay for the New Deal spending while at the same time regulating business profits. Why would anybody invest in these conditions? You assume all the risks while the government regulates how much return you can make. Even then, the left was all about punishing greedy businesses and the result was just as predictable then as it is now. Sound familiar?
As for the notion that FDR worsened the depression being a recent creation, my father has been stating this SINCE the depression.
"Yet after all this, the grand promise of an end to the suffering was never fulfilled. As the state sector drained the private sector, controlling it in alarming detail, the economy continued to wallow in depression.
"The combined impact of Herbert Hoover's and Roosevelt's interventions meant that the market was never allowed to correct itself. Far from having gotten us out of the Depression, FDR prolonged and deepened it, and brought unnecessary suffering to millions. "
The apt comparison, of course, would be FDR's policies verses those of the Brits, French & Germans -- all of whom recovered much sooner than the US.
Somewhere recently I heard of a new book which talks about how shabby Hitler's economic policies were, and yet even they proved more effective than Roosevelt's!
"Things are much better than during Hooverpression that Great and Sainted FDR ended overnight. There is less unemployment, and no bread lines. There are chicken nuggets and Tater Tots on every plate!"
Right, Bob. Instead, we don't count about half of the unemployed; and instead of bread lines, we just have food pantries and Food Stamps, WIC, "commodities distributions", and other mechanisms to make sure those unsightly bread lines stay out of sight so as not to embarrass the tax spenders, or cause the tax payers to question.
Run on sentences are fun, and sometimes even effective, no matter what Word's style & grammar nannies say.
What people forget too is that Hoover tried almost all of the same things that FDR did, from tax increases to work programs. It only made things worse, and FDR just piled onto the pain by increasing the intensity of the bad policies.
I’ve seen one economist call the depression a perfect storm of poor luck and more importantly poor policy.
The writer of this article is a real idiot.
What's "newly formed" is the media propaganda campaign to discredit any criticism of FDR's New Deal, in order to pave the way for Obama's.
He created a number of programs like the Works Progress Administration that employed people to work in parks, dig holes, fill holes, do stuff and get paid. This doesn’t, on the surface, look like it would prolong a depression. In fact, isn’t it nice that people who were begging for work could have something to do that paid a wage?
Of course, a little deeper common sense suggests that beyond such work, the wages that business could afford would be in competition the government program. This means your business would have to wait to be able to afford the labor. That is only a small part of the total picture. Other nations also faced problems in the 1930s due to the worldwide depression and some did better than others.
If a govt program puts constraints on business or is anti-business, that program would slow business founding and recovery. Also, higher taxes and legislation to favor labor organizations that pressure business will slow business recovery.
It is difficult to compare the US with another nation to get a sense of the effect of FDR’s policies on the depression because of a lot of differences between countries. However, you can compare the US in the 30s to the US in the 70s or even 1837 and see differences. One difference is the time to recovery.
To the MSM “newly formed” applies to something that has been known for 50 years.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.